Large asteroid passes close to Earth and is only discovered days later by an observatory

An asteroid passed close to planet Earth on July 13th, but wasn’t discovered until July 15th by the Atlas observatory in South Africa.

Named 2023 NTI, the object is about 60 meters in size, one of the largest to have passed close to Earth in recent times. The asteroid flew about a quarter of the distance between Earth and the Moon – over 60,000 miles (96,500 km).

The distance is considered safe, but it has caused a warning about how potentially dangerous objects can fly close to Earth unnoticed.

newly discovered #asteroid 2023 NT1 passed about 1/4 the Moon’s distance on July 13, but wasn’t discovered until July 15, as it approached Earth in the daytime sky. It may be as large as 60 meters across, possibly larger than the asteroid that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona. pic.twitter.com/VLXB4ChTMJ

—Tony Dunn (@tony873004) July 16, 2023

At that size, 2023 NT1 can do significant damage. The Chelyabinsk meteorite, which injured around 1,500 people and damaged more than 7,000 homes and buildings when it fell in Russia in February 2013, was just 20 meters in diameter.

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According to the European Space Agency (ESA), statistically, asteroids of this size hit the Earth once every 50 to 100 years and can be catastrophic, as evidenced by the case of the extinction of dinosaurs in its theory most accepted by the scientific community.

Another more recent case occurred in November 2021, when the asteroid 2021 UA1 was identified hours after passing reasonably close to satellites in geostationary orbits, just 3,000 km above the Earth.

Many asteroids like 2023 NT1 that fly towards Earth are not easily detected by scientists because they reflect sunlight, especially objects considered small on the scale of space.

The ESA estimates that there could be a million asteroids in the same size range of 30 to 100 meters flying close to Earth. More than 98% of them have yet to be discovered, according to the space agency.

Small asteroids, less than a kilometer in diameter, are called meteoroids. When they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they are called meteors – which can break up into smaller meteors, due to friction with the air, thus becoming several meteorites.

Forecast Chelyabinsk

Like 2023 NT1, no one saw the Chelyabinsk meteor arriving in 2013. This fact highlighted the need to create technologies that can monitor the arrival of objects close to planet Earth.

For this, ESA manages the Neomir project, a telescope that will be located between Earth and the Sun during its mission and will act “as an early warning system for asteroids of 20 meters or larger that cannot be seen from the ground”, explained the agency.

Being situated outside Earth’s distorted atmosphere and with a telescope observing in infrared light, Neomir will monitor a ring near the Sun that is impossible to observe from Earth’s ground.

“The mission will detect asteroids passing between Earth and the Sun – any that pose a threat that we cannot see at the moment will have to pass through this ring,” the ESA said.

The mission is scheduled to launch in the mid-2030s using an Ariane 6-2 rocket.